


Dog Walker

by eruthiel



Category: MarsCorp (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Hair Gel, arts and crafts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-23
Updated: 2016-08-23
Packaged: 2018-08-10 00:09:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7822642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eruthiel/pseuds/eruthiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even if Oranges are as stupid and unreliable and useless as everyone says, nobody accuses them of being dangerous.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dog Walker

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abwpt7sRnPY). Someday his mind's gonna wreck all y'all.
> 
> I promise I am writing a Hob/David fic but appropriately enough it's mutated into something large and out of control, so here's something else! I hope you like it!! Any & all feedback would be massively appreciated <333

"Hey, Earth lady. If you're not doing anything important today, and I know you ain't, you should stop by pod 933, check on that creepy little Orange you hang around with. He's got... well, I don't wanna spoil the surprise, but it's pretty fuckin' funny."

Before she can respond, Bonnie is off the line, and Hob knows it's pointless trying to talk to her when she doesn't want to talk. She looks quizzically at Jim. "What was that about?"

Jim shrugs. "Search me, boss. Anyway, Bonnie must be joking – you've got loads of important work to do today!" He twists a stick of glue, applies it carefully to a paper cutout of a cartoon frowny face. "What could be more important than updating these plans of the base to account for the fire that accidentally broke out in the surveillance department last night? Oh, shoot, I've put the glue on the wrong side."

Hob takes a deep breath, puts aside the glue and scissors they borrowed from the nursery school, and stands up. "You know what, Jim? I think you're finally getting the hang of this."

"Whaaa? Really?"

"Sure, whatever. Look, just stay here and update the rest of the plans. I'm going to go and see if Dave's okay."

"But Hob! You shouldn't go to the Orange zone alone!"

Already halfway out of the door, she pauses. "Why not? Is it dangerous?"

Jim has to think about this for a moment. "Well, no," he concedes at last, "but it's not very nice."

In the lift, Hob thinks about the holograms that started replacing windows on high-class trains, back on Earth, not long before she left. Until then, whenever she looked up from her tablet by mistake, she used to catch glimpses of the London slum she passed by on her daily commute. It wasn't that she minded its existence, just its appearance – and she certainly didn't want to go there herself.

So it is with the lower-tier pod zones. When she first saw Jim's place, she found it appallingly cramped and mean for a family of five, but since looking further into the living conditions of the Purples and Oranges, she's come to agree with him that it's really not that bad. Or at least, it could be worse. In particular, the level on which she now finds herself is in terrible repair, even for MarsCorp; half the lighting panels are faulty, lending the air of a spooky old hospital in a horror film, and a loose floor tile trips her up as she rounds the corner onto corridor 104-E. With nearly everyone at work in different parts of the base, the only sounds are Hob's own footsteps and the occasional groan of a pipe or vent from overhead.

Ever-reliable in moments of peace and quiet, Bonnie's voice comes echoing off the walls. "Attention, employees. The surveillance department wants you to know that it's now looking to recruit new staff to replace the ones that were destroyed or damaged in last night's accidental fire. If you're interested in applying, don't do anything or contact anyone. Just stay put. They'll find you." The announcement tone rings away to nothing, leaving the corridors more haunted than ever.

Hob is starting to wish that she hadn't come alone. She knows it's irrational – after all, there's no crime on Mars – but she can't shake the memory of those slums, unlit streets at night, back alleys, bad neighbourhoods, and all the dangers they used to imply. She tells herself not to be such a baby. Even if Oranges are as stupid and unreliable and useless as everyone says (and she's not convinced of that), nobody accuses them of being dangerous.

Corridor 104-G is deserted except for Dave, kneeling outside his pod with a sponge and a bucket of foam, muttering and scowling while he scrubs at the walls and door. He stops when he sees Hob coming. "Hob! What can I do you for?" She can tell that he's aiming for 'pleasantly surprised,' but it comes out more like 'exhaustedly shocked.' He squints past her. "Where's your shadow?"

"I left him to take care of an urgent administrative operation for me, so that _I_ could come and check on _you_." She frowns down at him. "What's happened here?"

Dave sighs and drops the sponge into the bucket, picks at a flake of paint on his thumb. "Nothing. Doesn't matter."

"Couldn't you get a CleanerBot out to do this?"

"They just laughed when they saw what it said."

Hob takes a step back to see the hilarious inscription he's trying so hard to remove. In three foot high letters, bright orange paint streaking down to the floor: KNOW YOUR PLACE.

 _Well_ , she thinks, _it was only a matter of time_. But deep in her gut, something tightens. "Leave it for now, Dave. I'll have a word with the cleaners."

Wonder sparkles in his upturned eyes. "Really?"

"Sure. Invite me in for a drink and we'll call it quits. I need to talk to you."

Stepping into Dave's pod is like getting into a lift. It's similar to her own little office, except that it's stuffed with tat – Hob's eyes skim over cartons of everything, pills, chocolates, underwear, plastic toys. It's all vibrating with the furious drone of a portable refrigerator wedged into the corner, which Hob suspects Dave has long since stopped noticing. There are no windows and no built-in lighting, only a large transparent panel in the door to let in light from the corridor. In response, Dave has dotted the walls with motion-sensor night lights, which start to glow weakly as he weaves between the piles of junk.

Nor is there anything resembling an en suite. Hob knew that already; on her way from the lift she saw, and smelt, the communal bathroom facilities. Instead there's a sheet draped over what looks like a reclaimed miniature waste recycler. (It hasn't taken Hob long to figure out that 'reclaimed' is Davespeak for 'never you mind where I got it.')

Atop a stack of boxes is a huge, uncovered tub of something wet and slippery and colourless and quivering. Hob watches in horror as Dave reaches into the slime, scoops up a handful, and runs it through his already gleaming hair.

"Sorry about the mess," he says, wiping his hands on a tea towel before tossing it on top of the waste recycler. Where it lands, Hob can make out the first few words of an embroidered slogan: 'If You Don't Have Anything Nice To Say...' Dave makes a face. "We'll have to go up to the bunk. But don't go getting any ideas! I'm strictly business."

"Don't be disgusting, Dave."

Next to the back wall is a steel ladder, which Dave politely invites Hob to climb. It takes her an embarrassingly long time to pick her way across the tiny space without knocking anything over, but eventually she has both feet safely on the first rung.

As she climbs, Dave fights to get the fridge door open. "What do you fancy? I'm running a bit low on the basics at the moment, but I can always cut a special deal for our esteemed supervisor. Coffee-ish? Tea-ish? Gin?"

"Um, water will be fine, thanks."

He grimaces. "Sure thing! I'll just boil some up. There's been a few problems with the pipes lately. Wouldn't want you swallowing anything nasty, not with the recycler on the blink."

While Dave curses and thumps at his fridge, Hob makes it over the last rung of the ladder and onto the bunk. It fills almost the entire area of the pod, bolted to the walls on three sides, with only a narrow gap for the ladder. There are more night lights, colourful pictures pasted on the ceiling, and blankets screwed up in a pile. There's no room to sit up. She crawls onto her stomach beside the wall, rests her chin on her arms, and listens to Dave losing a battle for refreshments. At last, she hears him struggling up the ladder behind her.

With a child's spill-proof beaker in one hand, Dave wriggles up to lie beside her. "Sorry," he pants, "can't get the heater working. This is the weakest beer I could find. I hope that's close enough."

"It's... fine." Hob accepts the beaker and puts it down between them. "Dave, I have to ask... that graffiti..."

He shrugs as best he can in the confined space. "I don't know what there is to say. I've been expecting something like that for a while."

"Really? From whom?"

"Oh, I don't know. Could be anyone. Neighbours, probably." He smirks. "They hate seeing me make something of myself while they rot on the scrapheap."

A little too much bitterness, there. Hob treads carefully. "So has this ever happened before?"

"Not exactly. I'm used to stuff like this, smaller stuff – rude notes, people yelling stuff when I walk past, sometimes. I know they talk behind my back. I guess something dramatic like this means I'm finally starting to hit the big time. Anything that pisses people off has got to be good!"

His idiotic smile is fringed with terror. Hob knows he knows what she's about to say. "Whoever it was, they were trying to warn you, Dave. What happens when they try to hurt you?"

He tries and fails to suppress a shudder, to look confident. "I'll outsmart them. Or become the first martyr to commerce."

"You're not supposed to know what a martyr is. How do you know what a martyr is?"

"Have you ever seen the 2133 all-canine 4D epic, Joan of Barc?"

"Regrettably, no."

Dave's face lights up. "Would you like to buy or rent it on disc or cassette? The copyright's expired so it's not fraud. Very educational film. Very... inspirational."

"No, thank you. Just at the moment I'm more concerned about your safety."

He attempts a dismissive hand-wave and knocks over the beaker of beer, which rolls harmlessly away. "Really, Hob, it's probably not even worth thinking about. Honestly. I'm more worried about the row when Plato finds out."

"Plato?"

"My roommate. We started calling him that at school because his face looks like a plate. We don't get on."

"Wait, you actually share this – this place with another person?"

"Two other people, but I don't worry about Rob. He won't even notice, he's always strung out on something. They both have proper jobs in the canteen, so they're not around much."

Hob just about manages not to gawk. "And you all have to sleep in this one bunk?"

"Ugh, I forgot, that probably sounds strange to you. We're all used to it down here. You share a bed because you have to, and you're too knackered to care."

"God. That's so..."

She tails off, unable to find a polite way of ending the sentence, so Dave finishes it for her. "Unfair? Especially when there are entire levels of the base standing empty?"

"That's not what I was originally going to say, but yeah."

Dave runs a hand through his hair, producing a wet noise that makes Hob's jaw clench all by itself. "It's good to hear you say that," he admits. "Not many people around here agree with me. They hate the way they live, sure, but then it's like they don't know how to want anything else. And they think there's something wrong with me because I know how to want. So sometimes I have to wonder if they're right, you know? Sometimes I think, if everyone else agrees, then maybe that makes me the crazy one after all."

Although she's not going to say so out loud, Hob knows how he feels. "But you know that wanting something doesn't guarantee you'll get it, right? No matter how hard you work, no matter how much you're prepared to sacrifice. Even in my time, before the colour system, some people had more than others. Someone's always going to be at the bottom of the food chain. That's just the way it is."

"I know! Do you think I'm stupid?" Dave laughs, but there's no humour in it. "There's got to be haves and have-nots. That's common sense. But why do _I_ have to be a have-not? We're the same, Hob, we're born the same. Nature didn't make you better than me. It's just – it's not fair!"

Hob shakes her head and speaks softly. "No, it's not. But..."

"How could I not know my place? I know my place better than anyone. I think about it all day, every day, it's like a knife in my chest! That's why I'm going to get out! You think I'm going to wreck everything, but I'm not. I don't _want_ to fight the world, I just want to be a part of it. I want to give more, I want to take more, I want _more_. And you can cut me down, but –"

" _Dave!_ "

He peters out as Hob puts a finger to her lips. He understands the broad point she's making, though she's not going to explain in detail – that Bonnie sent her here; that Bonnie has access to most of the hidden microphones on the base; that Bonnie already distrusts them both and will not hesitate to make trouble for them if they go too far.

After a few seconds of silence, Dave asks, "Can I show you something? We'll have to roll over."

Following his lead, Hob manages to flip herself onto her back, leaving her nose just a few inches from the ceiling and the pictures she noticed there when she first climbed the ladder. She'd half expected them to be pinups, even though she knows Martian men don't go in for that kind of thing as much as their twenty-first century Earth counterparts.

They're not pinups. Nor are they photos of the friends and families of Dave and his roommates, which would have been her other guess. Instead the ceiling is plastered with propaganda posters and stickers. THE SECRET TO HAPPINESS IS ACCEPTANCE; DOUBT HURTS, QUESTIONS COST LIVES; I'M JUST ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL. All interspersed with simple illustrations of happy, hard-working Martians.

In the middle is a more complex image depicting a rainbow in a glass prism – no, it's a pyramid, and the colours go not from red to purple, but from yellow to orange. It's so close to Hob's face that she has to look at each detail individually, and she wishes she didn't, because the pyramid is made of people. Smiling people in brightly coloured uniforms, each layer crushed by the one above. At the top, a woman in a gleaming white jumpsuit is standing on the heads of her underlings and reaching up with one proud arm to grab at the stars. This poster does not need a slogan.

Beside her, Dave sighs. "This stuff makes me feel so small."

"Then why don't you take it down?"

He answers slowly. "Feeling small makes me feel angry, and feeling angry makes me feel braver. I need to remember what I'm up against."

Hob can see the sense in that. She turns her head to look at him, but lying down makes it too awkward, so she looks back up at the posters. "I believe in you, Dave. I think you're a force to be reckoned with. But I have to be honest – I don't really care about this." Out of the corner of her eye, she sees him deflate slightly. "I don't think I really care about anything except the terraforming mission any more. Everything else is just... parts, of one kind or another. But you're more than just another Orange. You're unique, and unique is always worth something. I guess what I'm trying to say is – you're useful to me. You could be even useful-er. So I'm not going to let anything bad happen to you. And I promise I will do what it takes to help you maximise your usefulness potential, all right?"

Dave runs his fingertips over the picture of the woman in white. "That's all I want," he says quietly.

 _Fuck it,_ thinks Hob. "Hey, er, by the way." She clears her throat. "Is that poster for sale? The pyramid one?"

"No," he grins, as if it really were a pinup, "this one's my favourite."

Not long after, Hob is picking her way back across the floor of the pod. It's a very short journey that requires a lot of time, concentration and physical exertion to avoid falling face-first in the tub of hair gel. "It's your roommates I feel sorry for," she groans. "You should get rid of some of this stuff."

Already safe in the doorway, Dave rolls his eyes. "What do you think I'm trying to do? It can take months to find the right buyer. Speaking of which, can I interest you in some gently used gardening equipment? Perfect for starting up your own little independent agricultural concern."

"That would be horribly illegal. Not to mention gross."

"Well, let me know if you change your mind. I have a lot of stock these days, and no allocated storage. None! This room is all I'm officially entitled to, so I have to make the most of it. And the office, of course."

"The office? You mean that store cupboard the janitors keep throwing you out of?"

"I'm playing the long game. They'll get bored eventually."

"Well, I wish you luck." Hob sidesteps an unsteady mountain of shoeboxes and staggers out into the corridor. The light which seemed spookily dim earlier is now almost blinding after the gloom of Dave's pod. "Jesus Christ."

"I'm sorry?"

"Nothing. Just an Earth thing." She rubs her eyes, heaves in lungful of sour air, and stretches her arms above her head. Then there's a pause while they both avoid looking at the graffiti. Hob squares her shoulders, back to her brisk self. "Don't worry, Dave."

"I'm really not worried..."

"I'm going to find out who did this and make sure they don't bother you again. Leave it with me."

Striding away, she hears him call out behind her. "Um, thanks, Hob! Stop by again any time! My door is always open!"

In the lift, a poster has come loose and is hanging down from a single corner. Hob flattens it out to see the faded slogan: MEAT IS MAGIC. The picture of a cheerful androgynous child, tucking into a meat cube as big as its head, is badly stained with something – blood, or maybe coffee. She rips it down and makes a mental note to have someone put together an up-to-date vegetarian design.

When Hob arrives back in her office, it strikes her as being far more spacious than before. Even with Jim in it, children's craft supplies spread out on the operating table in front of him, it is at least quiet, and leaves her room to breathe. Jim beams when she walks in; she can almost see the tail he doesn't have thumping up and down in delight. He hasn't made much progress with the plans.

"Welcome back, boss! How did it go?"

"Fine. I need to see all the security footage of corridor 104-G from the last twelve hours."

His face falls. "O-oh, um... that might be tricky. The surveillance department took a really big hit last night since it, like, accidentally caught fire. Remember? Apparently the short-term storage is still malfunctioning."

Hob nods calmly. "Of course it is. In that case, go and tell the cleaners to take care of the mess outside pod 933. And get me a coffee. A decent one, if at all possible, though I know it's a long shot."

He ambles off, leaving the office even more empty and peaceful than before. On cue, the announcement tone rattles through the walls. "Attention, employees. Just a friendly little update for you: everything is still perfect. Nothing is wrong anywhere. So if you ever feel like maybe something should be changed or improved, the only thing that needs fixing is _you_." A pause. "Just sayin'."

Hob sits down at the table, picks up a glue stick, and gets back to work.


End file.
